Tuesday 16 February 2021

Happy Sisters' day


Forty years ago today, 16th February 1981, The Sisters of Mercy famously played their first ever gig, supporting The Thompson Twins at a CND benefit concert held at Alcuin College at The University of York.


York University 16th February 1981 (excerpt regarding SoM)
It's only politics! The CND "Winter Cruise" off in York, presumably in an attempt at poppy polemics which illustrated the problems faced in that marriage of convenience between pop music and worthy causes, the benefit gig.
As the assembling audience got tanked up in the bar, two support bands failed to grab the attention of the few in the hall. Maybe Sisters of Mercy opened up a bit gloomily, all suitably bleak and industrial featuring the mandatory drum machine. Lift-off failed and the bar did good business.
- "Beaten To The Punch" York fanzine, May 1984 (Still Unusual, Tumbler 15.08.2012)

Happy Sisters Day to everyone. 
- Trevor Ristow, author of SoM biography "Waiting for Another War"


Haus Arafna - Asche (2020)


Haus Arafna
Asche
(2020)

Hardest and, above all, darkest work Haus Arafna has ever created. Haus Arafna recalibrated: more Angst less Pop. The new album is raw, brutal, sad - not a spark of hope beneath the layer of ashes, just the certainty of suffocating in the Darkness. Noisy voices from out of the afterlife, unredeemed shoutings, all words in German language which are difficult to understand due to electronic distortion. Only the accompanying text print deciphers and reveals poetry as touching as a funeral oration, and word collages with the fragile logic of a nightmare. An album of timeless character.


01. Leiden An Deiner Statt (Schwarzer Strom I) [4:02]
02. Feierhalle (Erweckt Im Krematorium) [1:40]
04. Asche (Wir Gehen Auf) [3:30]
05. Toter Mensch (Krone Der Schöpfung) [3:45]
06. Keine Tränen (Keine Keine Keine Eine) [3:46]
07. Sieh Mich An (Wenn Du Stirbst) [3:26]
08. Deine Liebe (Durchdringt Die Welten) [4:12]
09. Erwache In Angst (Schwarzer Strom II) [3:40]
10. Sieh Mich Nicht An (Wenn Ich Dich Berühre) [4:08]
11. Eroberung Der Einsamkeit (Gefühle Sind Krankheit) [3:06]
12. Ausbluten (Pulsschlag Der Freiheit) [3:49]


Discogs
mp3db
mp3rally
Israbox
In The Fog
The Music Fire
Google search: page 1 - page 2 - page 3 - page 4
Soulseek search: Haus Arafna Asche

Mortiis - Spirit of Rebellion (2020)


Mortiis
Spirit of Rebellion
(2020)

The undisputed inventor of dungeon synth, Mortiis, is set to unleash new music unto the world in form of a release entitled "Spirit Of Rebellion" - a re-interpreted expansion and continuation of the 1994 Era I classic "Ånden som Gjorde Opprør". The music on this album was originally intended to be a re-recording of "Ånden som Gjorde Opprør". It quickly turned into something much bigger, and very different from that.


01. A Dark Horizon pt.I [3:35]
02. A Dark Horizon pt.II [3:35]
03. A Dark Horizon pt.III [2:11]
04. A Dark Horizon pt.IV [6:38]
05. A Dark Horizon pt.V [4:30]
06. A Dark Horizon pt.VI [4:03]
07. Visions of an Ancient Future pt.I [4:07]
08. Visions of an Ancient Future pt.II [2:08]
09. Visions of an Ancient Future pt.III [4:01]
10. Visions of an Ancient Future pt.IV [4:29]
11. Visions of an Ancient Future pt.V [2:29]
12. Visions of an Ancient Future pt.VI [6:15]
13. Visions of an Ancient Future pt.VII [3:04]


Discogs
Bandcamp
Soulseek search: Mortiis Spirit Of Rebellion

Attrition - The Mouthless Dead (2021)


Attrition
The Mouthless Dead lathe cut 5" 33 ⅓ RPM limited edition single
(2021)

Part 11 of the "2 Minutes Symphonies" serie, limited 30 numbered copies in special sleeve.


1. The Mouthless Dead [1:59]
2. The Bone Factory [1:59]


Discogs
Bandcamp
Grobljanski krug

Wednesday 3 February 2021

Die Form - Mental Camera (2CD Limited Edition) (2021)


Die Form
Mental Camera 2CD limited edition
2021

The chameleon is back. And it is shimmering in the thousand colours of night: As always when avant-garde electro trailblazers Die Form open a new chapter in their intoxicating career, the eyes of this worlds' lustful sound aesthetes rest firmly upon them. Even after 43 years side by side, the musical intercourse between Philippe Fichot and Éliane P. hasn't lost a bit of its haunting presence, its nepenthean effect, its radical eroticism. Latest sprout of this both fated and fruitful partnership is an oeuvre that's rendering speechless as much as it is stimulating, that's illuminating the deepest depths of our psyche while at the same time building a deeply spellbinding electronic shrine to the horrifying beauty of night itself. "Mental Camera", as the both short and meaningful title goes, is consciously ambiguous in its etymology: A camera that records psychic states, but also "camera", the Italian world for chamber. Both meanings conjoined lead to the very essence of their latest manifesto of gloomy electronics: A mental chamber, a voluptuously dark record about the passing of time, about dreams going down the drain. Those are songs about our imagination, about the colossal world within our heads, about the shadows, about memories and mother nature.
Born in endless nights, "Mental Camera" sounds like the soundtrack to a lost David Lynch movie: Enigmatic yet demanding, full of forbidden promises and abyssic thoughts. A naked dance on the edge of the soul, an electronic opus magnum formed by Surrealist masters, harking back to the classic "Poupée Mécanique" as well as the long-since legendary "Trilogy of Passion" which defined Die Form as a project of immortal genius back in the nineties. This partial return is also becoming apparent in the hauntingly explicit visual aspect of the albums - intimate Die Form followers will know what this means.
However, Die Form 2021 is also a piece of electrified zeitgeist, a primum mobile of ritualistic club music. Testimony to this is a song like the hypnotic force that is "Lilium Dolorosa", easily one of the strongest, most poignant pieces of music Fichot ever wrote. But then again, all of "Mental Camera" is: Sensual and intuitive, at times animalistic, at times avantgardistic, always committed to night, lust and shadow. Since 1977.


cd1: Mental Camera
02. Continuum Dream [5:10]
04. Lilium Dolorosa [3:45]
05. Animal Memory [4:15]
06. Automatique [3:16]
07. Memory Of Future [3:54]
09. Materia Oscura [3:58]
10. Les Corps Purs [3:45]
12. Paradis Perdus [4:01]

cd2: A Coeur De La Nuit EP
01. Au Coeur De La Nuit (mix #2) [3:48]
02. Before Silence And Blindness [3:55]
03. The Persistence Of Fear [3:43]
04. Au Coeur De La Nuit (male vocals) [4:07]


Discogs
Bandcamp
Amazon
EMP-online
Grobljanski krug
Juno Download
Google search: page 1 - page 2 - page 3 - page 4
Soulseek search: Die Form Mental Camera

ROME - Parlez-Vous Hate? (2021)


ROME
Parlez-Vous Hate?
(2021)

ROME is back with a surprising new album bursting with anthems; a tongue-in-cheek, punk rock cry for freedom of expression! After last year's phenomenal long player "The Lone Furrow", no one was expecting Jerome Reuter to hit so soon and so hard, but "Parlez-Vous Hate?" delivers on all fronts. ROME's surprise album is a barn-burning, bombs-dropping, ceiling-cracking, ozone-splitting all-out-attack on what one would have expected from ROME after last year’s thought-provoking "The Lone Furrow", and delightfully offhanded in its delivery.


01. Shangri-Fa [0:24]
03. Born In The E.U. [3:38]
04. Death From Above [3:18]
05. Panzerschokolade [4:03]
08. Feral Agents [4:06]
10. Blood For All [3:35]
11. Alesia [3:41]


Discogs
Amazon
Grobljanski krug
EBM
Side-Line magazine
Juno Records
Google search: page 1 - page 2 - page 3
Soulseek search: Rome Parlez Vous Hate

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